“Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That’s insane. But, thinking that they might be… Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat. But, what if it isn’t? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we’d all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.”

Ape Con Myth is all about the might of might. TMBG (film) summed it up in less than two minutes some 42 years ago…

Unlike previous years, the latest Ape Con Myth calendar did not turn into a pumpkin on January 1st.

[Periodic? Yes. Perpetual? Yes. Pumpkin? No.]

As a perpetual calendar that will outlive us all, the Periodic Calendar has not yet begun to fight change the way the world thinks about time. But now, after three months of prototyping and design followed by a month of fundraising on Indiegogo to make the first-edition prints a reality, the real work begins…

At PeriodicCalendar.com, you’ll find all the latest news and research as Ape Con Myth explores the ramifications of the Periodic Calendar and begins to share it with the world.

Is 1st place South Dakota or 50th place West Virginia the state with the least or most Poor Mental Health Days?

This is just one example of the fun to be had at America’sHealthRankings.org, where you’ll find both an interactive map and timeline of state performance on a wide array of health issues along with a large resource of actions you can take to support your favorite cause.

Another game to play when confronted with a somewhat random website full of stats is, Why Does This Site Exist and Who’s Behind It? “America’s Health Rankings” is about as generic as the name under it, United Health Foundation. The United Health Foundation, of course, was established by the United Health Group, which you might or might not recognize as the largest single health carrier in the United States. What’s their motivation? Perhaps the same as yours. They probably don’t want you to have to go to the doctor either.

When it comes to prisons in the United States, the thing that really sticks out is how increasingly prone we are to put people in them.

And the worst part is, who is really going to stop and ask why? It’s so much easier to assume they all deserve it. Because, you know, everyone knows life isn’t fair, except when the courts are involved.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMXjmHXroEY]

Yep, we’re all just a bunch of people getting exactly what we deserve!

The message here is for the adults of course. And the adults understand too, though without quite getting it.

“Kids naturally love to run around and play,” Dr. Booth said. “But they’re just not doing it as much now. And we don’t know why. So what we really need to understand is, what’s happening to our kids that makes them quit wanting to play?”

Unfortunately the doc wants to dosomething about it, instead of keeping still, as the I Ching suggests. If children naturally play, it’s something the adults are already doing that is draining the life from these youngsters. The process should be to stop doing stuff to these kids until they get their groove back. Instead, things like this are being said…

But none of these suggestions will be easy to put in place, Dr. Booth said, or inexpensive, and all will require scientific validation. No one expected, after all, that well-designed exercise interventions for children would prove to be so ineffective.

… Wait…

No one expected, after all, that well-designed exercise interventions for children would prove to be so ineffective.

No matter who you are or what you do, you’ll likely join the rest of us in breathing a sigh of relief for not being born any earlier than you were. As Vonnegut put it in Cat’s Cradle, “History! Read it and weep!” And weep is what you might do looking through this collection of vintage motivational cards from the early 1900’s. While suggestive of ideas that might propel one to action, you can almost taste the condescension and extrapolate from it the working conditions that might have acted as the side dish to our past toiling.

As you return to your labor today, be thankful that its 2012 and not 1912, 1812 or worse. And for all those reading from 2112, Despair, Inc. will give you a glimpse of how twisted things were in the early part of the 21st century.